E7: California's collapse, how SPACs are opening the markets for growth stocks & more

SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, welcome back to the all-in podcast besties have reunited. It's been a bestie summer chamath. How are you doing? You're back in America. Yes, I'm back in America back in America feels great. Good summer. Yes SPEAKER_01: I had seven weeks in Italy. It was really incredible SPEAKER_01: What is the vibe in Italy post pandemic? Obviously they had the roughest of any nation, I think except for China and Wuhan With all the cover 19 how it how's the psyche there? No, it was incredible because they're I mean, they're so resilient. They basically SPEAKER_03: Decided that they don't ever want to go through it again. So Everybody wore a mask and people socially distance. There's a lots of dinners outside No restaurants were really seating people indoors you'd walk into a store and you'd have to put some you know, puro on your hands and wear a mask and There was like, you know 40 50 cases a day and then I keep looking at the news when I was there 60,000 a day here. I was it was just really it was sad and then on top of that to see the riots the fires I mean, there's a you know, it's been a disturbing summer here SPEAKER_01: How are you doing David Sachs you're back in San Francisco and You got to spend a little bit of time in an undisclosed location as we we know from the pot last couple episodes of the podcast How is San Francisco right now? How has your bestie summer been? SPEAKER_00: It's been great. Yeah, I was I guess I can now disclose that my disclosed location Was was Mexico specifically Cabo and that was it was a great place to be for Nobody cares. Yeah, exactly but actually SPEAKER_00: It was great. It was a great place to be in the early stages of the pandemic because everyone was wearing masks you know, they did take it really seriously and there were very few cases and seemed like it was under control at least in the area I was and then you know we came back to San Francisco for school for the kids school which you know, I'm not sure we have to be here but But that's that's that's what we came to school actually open SPEAKER_01: Are they going to school or they keep pushing it out two weeks like my kids are? Yeah, it's we don't they're not going in SPEAKER_00: Person yet, but I think they keep trying to figure out when they're gonna be able to start doing that So it's all zoom based right now. Yeah, which means no learning, right? SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you think these kids are actually learning on zoom or do you think it's just Glorified a little bit. I mean a little bit. I think it's it's it's difficult SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we gave up on it and free burger you there SPEAKER_02: I'm here Bay Area SPEAKER_01: How's your bestie summer been during this crazy time? I've been in the Bay Area. I've been SPEAKER_02: I've been crossing all seven layers of Dante's Inferno here in California moving from the outer layer of kovat to the middle layer of California's proposed wealth tax to the inner layers of extreme heat Smoke and the absolute central layer of pain more recently my three-year-old daughter decided 34 nights ago to not sleep anymore So yeah, we've been living living the life it's been glorious and You know, I wear a mask now for kovat and then I wear another mask on top of that mask for the smoke So we're just living the California dream. Well my Parents immigrated here for you know paradise. Well, I guess that's a good place to start and SPEAKER_01: Just if anybody cares I spent A great time I guess nobody cares SPEAKER_03: We forgot Jason how's your bestie summer You know, I've been lonely and I tweeted I'm lonely and I got about 50 phone calls from people who are like SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine J Cal being sad but I actually had a talk with my wife and I said I what are the symptoms of depression because I Think I might have depression and I went through and I was like, I don't have depression I'm just I have great empathy for all the people suffering and you know, I just being isolated you guys know me very well better than anybody like I like to talk to people and It's been really difficult for me to I'll be totally candid to be isolated like this and the podcast Is is great and doing this podcast is great. But man, I miss people. I just miss what are the what are the symptoms of your SPEAKER_03: Depression just before you were self-diagnosing. I'm just curious. I was I was feeling like SPEAKER_01: Just sad about watching the riots and watch people shoot each other and then watching You know the the wildfires watching people die unnecessarily and then watching the madness for the election It was just all becoming like I wouldn't say overwhelming, but it just made me very sad that You know so many people can't go back to work and then the stock markets ripping and it's a very I don't know how you guys feel but it feels very surreal right because in our world and I don't know how your portfolios and investments are doing, you know, a lot of the companies we've invested in as angel investors Are doing just wonderfully and we're investing more than ever but then you turn on the television. It's like the doom scrolling is crazy So I had to just stop doom scrolling. I think that was the key thing to Martha was just looking at Twitter is that the trending topics is so depressing and and just so overwhelming at times that I I took three days off this weekend and went camping and I literally didn't pull up Twitter and I felt much better So I think it's really Twitter related like just opening up the trending topics I don't know if you did that on your holiday in Italy But it really is a quick way to get depressed SPEAKER_03: the best thing is that I was using it in a different time zone and so I was basically out of the flow and it makes a huge difference because then you're not in the emotional turmoil of people's immediate reaction and so you can just kind of move on and then also I just had a really Fun summer because I really tried to detach and not use my phone I had you know, I kept my meetings to a few hours a day and then otherwise I was doing things Yeah, you want to know you want to know my phone call to Jake? Oh, yeah. Hey Jake SPEAKER_00: Oh, I saw on Twitter that you're you're sad and lonely. It's like yeah. Yeah, it's like are you suicidal? It's like no, okay Goodbye SPEAKER_01: But I do I do want to thank you David for having me down to Cabo and we got to have some good times You had some good movies Gladiator extended cut was great Some other movies that we watched could get us cancelled So we won't admit that we watched history of the world or any other Mel Brooks movies But we had a good time played a couple rounds of golf and that was good times But let's talk about California because I think you know, we're all residents currently of California But let me just put it out there how many people on the call are considering leaving, California Anybody is that going through anybody's mind right now just going through my own SPEAKER_03: For well, it's not for me But I think that California is sort of emblematic of what could happen if you actually have You know the legislative bodies plus You know the the top sort of political leader up and down on one ticket I mean, you know you you basically have like Massive rife incompetence and it's been compounded you never I mean, you know If people who are Democrats would have said oh the best thing that can happen for Democrats is if you have you know Local cities plus an assembly plus the state senate plus the governor as a Democrat Republicans would have said the same thing for Republicans but as it turns out It basically creates the worst outcomes. And so instead what you need is a little diversity of ideas and a little push and pull But California is like a bunch of clowns in a clown car right now. It's a joke but I'm not gonna move now a part of an I'm not gonna move is I I you know my taxes I've set up in such a way where California can't get access to most of my assets anyway, so, you know they can pound cent SPEAKER_02: Yeah, David how are you SPEAKER_01: Sax how are you feeling about California right now? and Just the craziness in San Francisco the homelessness problem in San Francisco has become acute during this It's it's really well, it's a well cast on top of it and it's it's a disaster. It's a disaster SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not I'm not leaving or anything, but it's certainly a topic of conversation that's come up a lot and I do know people who have left I know a couple of people who you know prominent people and the venture community who've recently moved to Austin and It's a horrible time for The the city and state be proposing all these new taxes as just take one example because people were already realizing that because of kovat and and this new sort of work from home and And zoom business culture where you can kind of work from anywhere That people are realizing they don't need to be in San Francisco or in Silicon Valley anymore to be you know in the technology industry And so at precisely the time that people were reevaluating where they wanted to be realizing that that could be anywhere California is now, you know proposing to massively increase the cost of being here So it's it's horrible timing and then you know, you do have this Sort of seemingly chronic Issue in San Francisco particularly with with sort of homeless problem Just seems to keep getting worse And there's there's sort of this weird hostility to technology and tech workers Here that I think is somehow uses a scapegoat to prevent the city from dealing with its real problems And what do you perceive those real problems to be in the city? SPEAKER_01: I mean you use the term homeless. I think most people looking at the problem As one person candidly told me, you know, what we have is not and I won't say who said this But it's a prominent person. They said this, you know, Jason the issue here is this isn't a homeless problem this is a junkie problem and they use specifically that I'm using that term because That's the term to refer to people who are addicted to opioids Methamphetamine fentanyl and that if you were to actually unpack what we're calling a homeless crisis It's actually a crisis of drug addiction and specifically fentanyl and I don't know if you guys saw We're gonna hit something like 500 overdose deaths this year. We're like gonna double last year and it's all fentanyl Which is a particularly, you know deadly drug. So I mean how much you think that is the problem David huge huge I mean, it's it's you're right that homelessness is not the the the cause of the issue that homelessness is the consequence SPEAKER_00: Of long-term drug addiction and mental illness. I mean, this is the it's the end state And you're right. The city is it's not really tackling the underlying issues. In fact, it's kind of eating and abetting them I mean how many Millions of needles does the city give away every year and then it only collects a small fraction of them With the remainder ending up on the streets. Um, it's just it's it's bonkers and I think part of the problem is that we keep saying that until we Is that we can't demand Any uh improvement in the situation in terms of homeless people, you know, we have this like poop squad in in san francisco, that's literally cleaning poop off the sidewalks because Homeless people are using our sidewalks as like a latrine basically as a bathroom And and what you keep hearing is that well, we can't do anything about that problem until we solve the homeless problem And that's a that it certainly we should try to solve that problem, but it's a very long-term, you know Difficult intractable problem in the meantime. We can certainly do things like demand that homeless people not do that Yeah, and the policing seemed to there seems to be a distinct issue with policing right now SPEAKER_01: I watched the san francisco tenderloin twitter account david freeberg and they've arrested something like 260 method meth and fentanyl dealers but we have a Da, chesa. I believe his name is who doesn't believe in prosecuting any of those crimes Related to drugs or petty crime freeburg. What is the city turned into? For you as somebody who's been a long-term investor in the bay area Um, well I moved here after I graduated college in 2001 and I loved san francisco SPEAKER_02: It was it was a quieter city and a quainter city. I honestly Over the years have found the traffic and the congestion and the buildup of the city to be frustrating i'm a little bit of a Anomaly in a sense because I think a lot of people, you know Think that the city should be able to do that Anomaly in this sense because I think a lot of people, you know think that the city should continue to grow and progress And build housing and so on those are all uh, you know fine objectives, but I think the quality of life has degraded for some time in the city as infrastructure hasn't kept up with the uh, the changing pace of companies growing here And as a result, we've kind of got this ballooning inflating budget that's been poorly managed. You've got um, I forgot the statistic but there's um, Some number of thousand people plus that are city government employees in san francisco earning over 300 000 a year Um, and so there there's a there's a chronic kind of bureaucratic issue Um, that is the cancer that has caused uh, you know A lot of the follow-on crises that I think we're now experiencing acutely here in the city now in terms of leaving To your earlier question. I you know Um, I was really like i've just been like everyone, you know Um, you know, like I kind of talked about the dante inferno layers. It's also like for me growing up It's like a seven layer burrito. It's like one layer of shit after another um start with the beans and in the middle you got the sour cream and um, you know, this city's just gotten um, Kind of and the state has gotten more and more difficult to live in and I and I was certainly thinking and talking to my wife Like we got to leave her family's here. So we're not going to leave the state But then I get a call last week that uh that I think 18 of us were on with governor niehssen and Um, you know, he made a couple of really interesting points that really did honestly reset my perspective, you know I i've tried to take a step back and think a little bit more broadly about the long-term opportunity in california The way the state operates right now It's the fifth largest economy in the world. They ran a surplus their refinance their debt They've done a great job kind of managing kind of the fiscal gap that that's that's being created by the covid crisis Um, and you know governor niehssen made a point like we have had the california exodus story that's percolated And cycled really for decades, uh, he pointed out an article which i've not been able to find But i've been looking forward from time magazine from 1959 that were like declared This is the year everyone's gonna exit us out of the state and we hear it every couple years There's some crisis that precipitates the mass exodus and it hasn't happened because it is a great place to work It's a diversified industrial base It's not just tech tech is a lot of the growth but there's a lot of industry here largest ag producer largest um Uh large military aerospace industry and on and on and on. Uh, this is a it's a great diversified economy It's a great diversified cultural base. It's by the oceans. It's by the mountains it's an incredible place to live and work and I don't think any of us want to give that up and uh, And the the media has done a great job kind of um Magnifying these these small stories that aren't really a story if governor and usa made the case that this wealth tax proposal You know was one assembly member it didn't even get into committee It wasn't even really being considered but it kind of created this this press flourish and everyone got involved and everyone I know kind of freaked out about it and it became this kind of Another catalyzing event, but it wasn't really real So if we kind of broaden our perspective a little bit Both in terms of space and time I I think we get a little more kind of comfortable with like of all the places to live and all the places to work This is the best and you can go save some taxes and move to austin But I mean then you got to go live in austin, you know, whatever Well, it's it's it's the best. It's the best you're right that it's the best in terms of SPEAKER_00: climate geography natural beauty, uh resources And the industries that have developed here and have you know strong network effects, but it's not the best politically I mean, it's among the worst politically and It seems like the politicians are doing everything they can to mess it up I mean, I almost wonder if there's like a resource curse issue particularly with san francisco where you know, there's this thing in and um, I mean this this observable thing with governments that Um that sometimes you get a resource curse where if there's like a lot of oil in the country or something Uh, you end up with with a government that's not very good because people just spend all their time going to war to Try and capture it and I kind of wonder if you know San francisco has been the beneficiary of being proximate to silicon valley this enormous like wealth creation prosperity job creation Um ecosystem that had nothing to do with creating and uh, I would say two things to build on what you're saying SPEAKER_03: um, the first is I think that when the economies in an environment are really really good All the really really smart people want to go into those economies and that leaves Generally dumber people to do things like politics so Uh, and that's less true in places that have shittier economies Uh, yeah And I and I actually think that that's that's practically true We may not want to think it and it may not may sound a little harsh, but it's true And you know the the way that you reverse it is what singapore does which is you make the civil servants the highest paid people in the economy Right and you treat them like knowledge workers and you say wow. Look i'm going to pay this person 250 000 300 000 a year you're shocked at the quality of the person you get that's the the first comment I want to make the second one though is is that unlike all these other times where I think people have been um, you know sort of uh prognosticating the doom and gloom of california the The thing that's different now is that Because it is such a dominant political environment for the democrats It's much easier to judge if they actually know what they're doing and if they are going to do things that are aligned with the uh, sort of like the moral code of the party that elected them and so like let's just talk for example About the fact that uh, we are not going to have police reform of any kind in california Which is where you'd think would be the first state where people got their act together and said, okay If we really believe that we need to reform police we can do it in our own backyards, but that legislation is going to get blocked because uh, uh californians have decided that they care more about the alignment to police unions than they do to the right of law and to Social justice for minorities and blacks. That's crazy SPEAKER_01: We should be the most progressive is your point on this chamath and The point is to say it explicitly is the politicians are in the pocket of the unions And because they're in the pocket of the police unions and the education unions We cannot make forward progress even though we're supposed to be the most liberal of all locations. Correct? That's in summary. Yeah, exactly SPEAKER_03: We we actually if we believe that we have you know up and down the ticket the ability to implement justice Right at least justice in the vein of the democratic party and what that platform represents Or for example all of the people that were out protesting Okay Uh during black lives matter during that entire movement. I suspect the overwhelming majority are democrats slash progressives Or, you know, let's just say the majority or at a minimum of plurality, okay But then the idea that then you have a state the most populous and the richest Filled up and down the ticket with people who are theoretically aligned with those political values But then when push comes to shove and the legislation hits the floor, it basically gets mothballed to me Is inexcusable and disgusting. Yeah. I mean look at the housing issue. We just had a bill SPEAKER_01: That was an incredibly simple bill. I think it was 11 Yeah, SB 1120. I don't know if you followed this one But I've been following it on the Twitter and it was a very simple piece of legislation any single family home lot Could have a duplex on it You could have two homes on a single lot and they couldn't even pass that in a city where you know a firefighter a teacher Etc cannot live within 90 minutes of where they work and they couldn't even pass that Well, also there's there's also a b5 right? I mean Jason has uber's third or fourth investor SPEAKER_00: Something to say about that, right? SPEAKER_01: I think third or fourth but Here we go to the VC brags controversy. Yes. Yeah, could we just could we just pin down exactly which one it is? SPEAKER_00: So you could just say you're the fourth investor It's so much better to say third or fourth and that was obviously but you know SPEAKER_01: a b5 is another one look at all the careers in which you can be David's acts a Freelancer and the high the more money you make the more you get to dictate your schedule But if you are poor and if you are in an entry-level job The California government will not let you even though 70% of drivers for these services want to be freelancers And the services right self said they will put into a fund for health care like they literally uber You know Dara's like hey, we're gonna put money into this lift is gonna put money into it They still will not let people decide for themselves what shift they want No sense. I mean And if you see trickled into like journalists, too SPEAKER_02: I mean there's they said now journalists if you write if you if you write 30 articles a year for a single outlet You're technically considered an employee even though you're writing the articles on your own time with your own research and you're getting paid for Successful article for good articles that are accepted and then there was this follow-on controversy about translators It's like well translators takes five minutes to translate an article So why would 30 articles apply to a translator and obviously when you have that degree of confusion and complexity something's off, right? Yeah, it feels like virtue signaling. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think well SPEAKER_00: I mean the reason why a b5 happened is it was at the behest of the teamsters, right? They're trying to unionize the uber and lyft drivers and they can't do it unless their employees and so, you know The the author of the the bill Lorraine a Gonzalez who's sort of in their back pocket You know that that's why she put forward the bill and then the absurdity of it was that you know they realized after introducing it that it would ensnare all these other occupations like the writers and journalists and photographers and translators as Yeah, even like feel like manicurist and so on right? So what they've been doing is they've been now Modifying the legislation to exclude all of these categories and in the process they're kind of laying bare What's really happening here? Which is this is all about either basically shutting down or forcing uber and lyft to comply with with the will of the teamsters and SPEAKER_01: It seems like the legislation blinked when uber and lyft said well, we'll just shut the service down So what are your thoughts on when that happened sacks dude? What do you think will happen? Who will win this a b5 shut down showdown? Well that what? SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they threaten to basically stop service and they got a stay I think from a judge Yes And so so a b5 doesn't go into effect until November when and there's a ballot initiative that they're sponsoring to get a b5 overturned so I think you know, I don't I don't it's hard to predict whether it's gonna win or not, but that to me is like Whether if a b5 were defeated by a ballot initiative in November, that'd be a really positive sign for the state of California SPEAKER_02: I'll say there was on this call with Governor Newsom last week He did point out that a b5 was more of kind of a law of inevitability as a result of that whole dynamics state Supreme Court decision Where the you know, the Supreme Court basically said look here's the criteria that defines an employee versus an independent contractor You know They get to decide what work they do or what hours or whatever and there's like some set of criteria and they said look uber Drivers and all these other kind of technically independent contractors don't meet those criteria fully Therefore they are employees and as a result, California Assembly tried to and had to effectively codify what it means to be an employee versus an independent contractor And I'm not arguing for the case I'm just saying what was conveyed by a governor last week on why this ended up coming to bear Now if they strike it down, there's gonna be some other law that's gonna pop up because this of the state supreme The dynamics decision and that's kind of you know, something's gonna have to get written down So sacks don't you think it ultimately ends up just being some sort of negotiated? Point between all of these industry leaders and you know the state to kind of figure out. Okay, what's everyone gonna? Compromise on to get something written down. That's law. I mean possibly I mean dynamics is not like SPEAKER_00: Constitutional it's not a constitutional decision. So the legislature can do whatever it wants here You know, and so if you were going to respond to dynamics, you don't have to kind of enshrine it So and I guess there was certainly some question Whether dynamics would apply to uber and lyft and in this way You know They could have made they could have made their arguments in front of a court, right? SPEAKER_03: Okay, look the problem is now and whatever applies to California applies to every state legislature How are these people supposed to figure this out? I'm sorry but like you know Who are we entrusting here to go and then all of a sudden understand the nuances of lyft and uber and really understand? The job that they do versus the translators versus the this person versus the that person versus the dynamics decision again I think 20 years ago. I kind of would have believed that politicians were generally some of the smartest people You know frankly amongst us and It really did attract a certain level of intellectual person who cared about legislating but you know now basically you just have like You know Jerry Falwell juniors running around. I mean these are these are They're all just running around until they get caught on Instagram and get fired I mean, they're just they're not the smartest people that we're dealing with And so what was what was Gavin Newsom's answer to that? It's really what I would you know, the Jerry Falwell junior point didn't come up to much but SPEAKER_02: We can follow up. I'm sure All right, it does seem to me that if they do become full-time SPEAKER_01: this would be a tragedy for the people who are trying to just do 10 to 20 to 30 hours of gig work like what happens to those poor people who wanted to fill in between when they drop their kids off of school and pick them up and just grab a couple hours here there as a second gig like If this actually does pass in their full-time honesty guys, honestly, you guys are such you you're you're you're honestly SPEAKER_03: look It won't affect them It'll affect the long-term profitability in the margins of the companies that have to hire them as full-time employees and they'll have to like You know make a bunch of rules and blah blah blah, but it has huge Operational implications and it has really terrible opex implications for a company But for the person that wants to work ten hours Jason, they'll still be able to work ten hours So I think I think the point is that like a specific shift SPEAKER_01: Like they're gonna have to come in at a certain shift time I think the point is like the entire public markets who all of a sudden think that a business looks one way SPEAKER_03: has to figure out that it's really a cost plus business and what it really means is you were if you were comfortable with a 60% or 70% reduction in the market cap of some of these companies you'd be okay with a b5 and I think that's where the tension Is where the people that made the law don't care about the market cap because they don't own the stock anyways And the people that are reacting to a b5 are the ones that own the stock and are really thinking about the market cap SPEAKER_00: Well, but the drivers the drivers don't mostly on the stock and they're against it. No, it's the drivers own eight shares David SPEAKER_03: I mean, come on. No, no, that's what I'm saying SPEAKER_00: Is there not shareholders for the most part, but this really does reduce their flexibility to? contract for their labor SPEAKER_03: No, but I think what you're saying will happen which is that they will create a you know, a b5 prime which is a modification That's neither this nor what it was But it seems that the tailwinds are pretty clear which is that we're moving to a place where these companies Have to get built in a very clever way and even if they are super clever and capturing consumer demand the unit economics are going to be pretty shitty and I just think we have to own that and and it probably what it means more than anything else is it's not a real Venture kind of business and so you may be deficit financing it or building it in a very different way than we used to SPEAKER_00: Right, but it doesn't have to be that way What you're saying is is I think that this law will have very adverse consequences for their business. Okay I mean I grant you that But it's it's what why is the the state interfering in the relationship between? Uber and its drivers in this way when everyone's happy with it. No, but it's not SPEAKER_03: I think what actually is happening is the state is effectively capturing the excess return of Uber and lyft Meaning I think if you just take a pure unemotional economic view at this It's like any other market if there is a huge amount of margin available and there are not many competitors What happens is somebody comes in to take the excess margin? SPEAKER_01: So that's the government it wants to take it and that unions want to tell you absolutely Yeah, absolutely SPEAKER_03: Should we let them then dictate what hours people work the thought exercise that I would ask guys if there was in a market SPEAKER_03: 90 different competitors for transportation Would a b5 have been written? Past adopted and my answer to you would be that it would not have been SPEAKER_01: So uber and lyfts and door dashes success is what leads to people wanting to get a slice the oligopolies SPEAKER_03: Model of success where not enough other companies are pulled through SPEAKER_01: Got it. Well that gives us a good segue into by the way Sorry last point on this Yeah and the funny thing is the people who created the problem are the ones that hate it the most which are the investors because they SPEAKER_03: Pile in the incremental dollars into the winners trying to King make a winner through capital and now what's happening? Is their rate of returns are basically getting taken away and I think that in in a weird way, that's also kind of fair Well, I I would just SPEAKER_00: Disagree slightly in the sense that just because this has big distributional consequences like basically Who who makes the the surplus? doesn't mean it also doesn't have a huge deadweight loss associated with it and whenever you Prohibit people from engaging in the type of economic contracts relationship that they want to engage in you're reducing surplus and so I so I hear what you're saying but and I think there is I think this is all about regulatory capture, right? This is the teamsters trying to capture a big piece of the value of uber through their politicians the legislature So you're right about that. But I also think that we should care about it. Not just as uber shareholders, but as Consumers of the product because it's gonna get worse. Well, and also the products gonna go away in certain jurisdictions SPEAKER_01: I mean if freeburg wants to get an uber north of the Golden Gate Bridge or in the East Bay Somewhere, they're just not going to have the economics or I got some communities To even operate the service so just like Uber eats and Postmates stopped delivering to Treasure Island a lot of the drivers were in their local communities at home with uber turned on and when they or door dash and when they got a call they would leave their house and That was part of the magic of it is you just be sitting there You know Netflixing or hanging out with your kids and then a good call comes in and then you leave your house That's why you would have that like one minute pause if you ever saw it You know in an uber ride where it's like why why isn't the car moving? It's because that person's at home and they were capturing the one ride every hour in their local, you know Suburban area, but if you force them to be hourly who was gonna say, you know what? It's not worth having an eight hour shift in you know, whatever Suburb and and the service will go away and then guess who's gonna not have service and you're at station. I think we're free bird Okay, sorry I was saying it was like Sax's point like, you know from a consumer perspective or Chamat's point SPEAKER_02: if you end up with 90 of these service providers and I'm a consumer. I'm less likely to order a cab or order a Rideshare service or I'm less likely to order food for delivery. I don't want to deal with 50 fucking apps I don't want to have to like go find the one app that has the contract with the one restaurant then the natural market Dynamics the the way that the market naturally evolves is I want simplicity as a consumer. I want efficiency That's what makes me want to use it more and when you take that away from that Because you're interfering from a regulatory perspective and how that market operates the product sucks for me and yeah The shareholders ultimately suffer I think to your point the way that that would probably get solved is you have people that are higher order in the consumer behavior SPEAKER_03: That own these relationships that enforce basically a user experience for example Facebook and Google and Apple essentially say we're abstracting all these services because there's 90 of you Google says I'm gonna put all of you guys on the map view You know Yelp says the same thing and essentially what opens what happens is there's some like open way where? essentially a service provider can turn themselves on and Broadcast into a network that says I'm available to do a for B and it all gets fixed now That's a future state Which was the original idea of uber by the way was to make a marketplace like that and now uber is talking about doing a franchise SPEAKER_01: Exactly what you're saying from office let some franchisee take the East Bay and then provide their inventory I think franchising is a really really smart business idea, and I think that particularly in transportation SPEAKER_03: And a lot of these services that have this natural dynamic to be local Where there are an infinite sum of many local markets, I think it's it's like a Burger King it's like a McDonald's and The the company that moves to a franchising model and then figures it out. I think will be a huge winner And that won't key and that will be a very asset light really operationally sophisticated very well-run highly profitable business I think Let's talk about the public markets SPEAKER_01: We Jason can we just talk about the police brutality thing in California? I just want to get you sure like it really bought it really bothers me that California is a very SPEAKER_03: bought it really bothers me that California like I bet you there's gonna be states that are Diverse in its Democratic and Republican composition and some Republican states that past comprehensive police reform and California will be one of the laggards. What do you think if you couldn't wave a magic wand shammoth? SPEAKER_01: What are the one two and three things take a minute to think it through and everybody on the call can? What are the one two and three things you would do to change policing in the United States? I have my own list, but I'm curious what you guys think and I actually put a tweet storm out about my number one thing What are the specific tactical things let's get tactical first SPEAKER_03: I mean the first one that I've always been a big fan of as I've studied it at least from 10,000 feet is ending qualified immunity Explain why and what that is, you know qualified immunity is essentially that they're there there is this immunity that certain individuals have and that they that they're not subject to prosecution and so you know, they essentially have a carte blanche to behave in ways that can be Good in some cases very very bad in other cases gray and other cases yet. There's no adjudication of their behavior And so you have to allow people with solid Dispassionate detached judgment to be able to enter and say hey listen you were way out of line here and there are consequences For it and people coming in Doing those jobs need to understand those consequences versus you have a carte blanche to basically do whatever you want And I think let's talk specifically about the murder SPEAKER_01: Well the shooting involving I would say murder right now because I think all the facts are not in but Jacob Blake was shot in the back He was obviously not listening to the police the police then followed him to his car There's a discussion of if there was a knife on the floorboard and Point blank they shot him in the back multiple times and I've heard both sides of this You know, this person is not listening to the police. This person is going into the car. They're reaching potentially for a weapon and The cops had no choice. It seemed to me that you know The training of a police officer might actually be that that was a legitimate shooting but That means maybe they have to rethink Policing because you could have easily taken that person down with it even the most modest of a chokehold or a tackle And when we see that it feels like that's the raw shock test right there of like how you look at shootings In police when you saw that shooting I take it from off of Jacob like and I saw it and I I just like SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I can't see these anymore. They they send me off the rails for days. But yeah, I did see it Yeah, and so I mean when you when you look at something like that, that's clearly training has to change because I SPEAKER_01: believe that based on Police training and qualified immunity. This is going to be considered even though it's shocking to see it. I think it's gonna be considered You know an allowed shooting or yeah and it's there's not gonna the person is not gonna be prosecuted because the person was clearly not listening and there was a knife on the Floor and he was going for it and you know It seems to me like we really need to change the actual training. The average is six months of training So I think that's one of the top things that is to change is that these these police officers have to be trained Not to fire first but to use other tactics so so for me the first one is that SPEAKER_03: the second one for me which I'm a really big fan of is that there needs to be a new way to actually intercept 911 calls and instead of Deploying police officers. We have a separate branch of people that we you know, massively pay and train that are effectively You know social workers plus plus and oh shaders. Yeah, and and they should be deployed in all kinds of situations Where I think that what what people want is a de-escalation and I think that sometimes the words De-escalation and police don't really sync up and in most a lot of people's minds they think of escalation So, yep, people who are trained to de-escalate I think and so for example, like, you know all of the Mental health checks all of the mental health issues Could probably be dealing with like this domestic disturbances would probably go into that category SPEAKER_01: The third one is I would very much rationalize SPEAKER_03: drug use Just because I think the amount of low-level offenses and arrests around drug use is antiquated for people's general views on drugs and I think that it needs to sort of correlate to how society views it and then You know the the last two that I would give you is that there's a concept of no-knock warrants That's how Brianna Taylor was killed. It's It's it's kind of really scary the idea that we could all be sitting in our houses right now as we are and Literally the police can just charge in I mean totally unnecessarily SPEAKER_01: I mean she was being for some like low-level drug idea They're gonna knock the doors in and of course a person's gonna try to protect themselves That's the demand house sacks. What are they not they knock the doors in and they were playing clothes wearing police officers SPEAKER_00: So people are coming and they did it like midnight when she was asleep. So yeah people busting at your house at midnight Screaming making noise and not dressed as cops. That's that's what are we? Yeah, and then the last one I would give you is militarization of police SPEAKER_03: A lot of these ideas by the way are Justin a mush's ideas I I've retweeted and I followed but he was the one that put me on to these things But you know like you have all this excess military equipment in the army that gets Basically passed through and now directly sold into police department, especially post 9-11. We basically militarized SPEAKER_01: So those are my what are your ideas around policing and how we should change it? You've heard two months I I don't have more detailed ideas than than Chamath. I think he's given some good ones for sure SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think we definitely need better training and I think better oversight over the use of force The the body cam idea Jason you you tweet about I think that's pretty interesting, too I think you're right playing that for the body cam idea SPEAKER_01: I had was I asked does anybody know and you know does black live matter or another organization track? Which police departments because we could get a list of every police department that exists in some database somewhere Do we actually know what percentage actually have body cams and what model they use and what percentage are working? because one of the things that I think has happened this year is you know, the live streaming and the live video and the number of smartphones out there has resulted in us being able to see what black and brown people have been telling us for decades, which is they're murdered by cops and Now we get to see it and you know, when you see George Floyd get murdered. It's fairly obvious that that's what happened We don't have a video or they have the video of Brianna Taylor getting murdered. So that's from a cop webcam I'm sorry body cam So I was thinking we should just start with that as a basic which is every single cop car should have a 360 camera in Every cop it should be a federal mandate and I don't exactly know how federal mandates were exact but don't you think there should be a federal mandate for just cameras and car cameras? SPEAKER_00: I think it's a good idea. I think the use of cameras is a good idea I mean, maybe not recording the police officers when they're sitting in their car, but every time there's like a You know like yeah, they pull somebody over sort of you know, like Fourth Amendment type search and seizure seizure type situation Yeah, I think it would make sense to have that on video. Why not? Every police will behave better go ahead free bird SPEAKER_01: There was a case the other day a SPEAKER_02: young Guy, I think it was 19 years old was shot in DC named Dion K. I don't know if any of you guys watch the body cam footage And so he was a 19 year old black man. He was shot died but in the body cam footage You can see that he pulls out this gun and throws it and when he pulls out the gun and flings his hand around He's got the gun in his hand. That's when the cop shot him And so there was about a hundred protesters that showed up, but it's largely become a non-story As a result of the facts associated with the body cam footage, but I just want to propose something else It's a little bit more radical Maybe my libertarian ideals kind of cross with my socialist ideals and forming this this concept, but perhaps You're a socialist. No I've never been accused of that. But if we if we trace back, you know the SPEAKER_02: These systems are really chaotic everything you're talking about is layers and layers of bureaucracy and ideas and shit We should do to manage the problem But there is kind of one common You know butterfly effect butterflies at the source of all of a lot of what we're talking about Which is guns if there weren't any guns in the United States, I would not feel threatened as a police officer I would never have any reason to feel threatened and I would never have any reason to pull a gun The reason I always make to pull a gun as a police officer is my life is threatened and in the absence of firearms I have no right to pull a gun and that's the case in like the UK for example Where there are like no police officer shootings of civilians because they're never under threat of being killed by a gun so there's a simple answer which is get rid of the guns, but you know a little too controversial and Obviously many layers to that argument especially from kind of both sides, but I would say You know much much of what's going to go on now and in the future. It's just chaos theory It's going to be building more layers of complexity. It's more entropy. It's more kind of associated Complexity to try and resolve the underlying problem of all of this which is that we've got guns on the streets We've got guns in people's hands and therefore, you know There's always this threat against every individual that their life might be taken by another SPEAKER_00: Well, let me make a prediction right now. There's not going to be any new gun control legislation for a generation Because of the the looting and writing that's going on Gun sales are at an all-time high. I mean every single gun store that ammunition goes you can't you can't get guns you can't get ammo and there are more first-time gun buyers In the United States in the last several months than there's ever been I mean the the ranks of the NRA must just be swelling right now And so this idea that you're gonna get gun reform. I don't think it's gonna happen. People aren't gonna support it and you know I think You know use the word I think idealistic. I mean, I I think it's like a little bit naive To assume that you're gonna be able to get rid of all the guns in the hands of bad actors There are a lot of people in this country who feel the need to have a gun to protect themselves and You know, the cops can't always get there quickly enough And a lot of people feel the need to have that for self-defense I also think the minimum amount of training for a police officer should not be six months SPEAKER_01: I think they have to read. I mean if we really want to have the society move forward and You know to solve our issue of race which is you know, like the original Sydney of America We're gonna really need to start thinking about making you know police go back to school for 18 months 12 months and rethink how we how we address the situation because It's just tragically unfair that one group of people's children Has to worry when they're driving in a car and you know other people on this call don't have to worry right and you know That is just crazy Just crazy. Let's take a hard shift to the economy and then we'll go into The election. What do you think trim off? You've been talking a little bit about the economy and the stock market ripping again, and we seem to have hit a pause But we did have like a massive rip with Tesla and Amazon Tesla and Apple, I guess doing a stock split And we hit all-time records. Why are we hitting all-time records Jim off? We have the most important thing that's happened. I think in economics in the last ten years SPEAKER_03: The Federal Reserve Jerome Powell gave this landmark speech and he basically said we are going to keep rates at zero for the next half decade Basically and five years at zero Yeah, I mean quite honestly, it's good. It could be a decade but they're gonna let inflation run Before they basically match it with rates. There's no path to any near-term inflation of any kind whatsoever and so Jason my honest perspective is you know, you're basically going to get paid to be long equities because Your risk-free rate is zero and will soon be negative. And what are you supposed to do if you're an asset manager? What are you supposed to do if you know, you're take California back to use in California. Let's just say you're CalPERS You're the California pension system and you have hundreds of billions of dollars Then you need to generate five or six percent a year To make sure that your pension isn't insolvent and the government is paying you zero SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that eliminates that option no treasuries for you your long equities SPEAKER_03: And when everybody is in that situation, you're overwhelmingly long equities and you know The you cannot fight the Fed and so you cannot wait them out. It's not like you can say. Oh, don't worry They're gonna change their mind They will change their mind but in reaction to market conditions that are out of your control, so all of these opportunities in my opinion are generally buying opportunities and I'm generally bullish. I'm more bullish now than I was before So you can't put your money into treasuries. You can't put it into a savings account SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you can't put it you you it doesn't seem like real estate or commercial real estate. It's a great bet right now So your options are private companies or public companies, correct? You know, I think it really is just public companies and I don't even think it's private companies. So meaning wherever capital is constrained SPEAKER_03: the returns Again, these excess returns are getting eaten up and so the the most unimpeded market for gains right now is the public markets I mean like no offense, but I think that if you were a very good stock picker in the public markets You're generating better returns then Sequoia benchmark name your best venture fund, you know, I see all these people spouting off On Twitter about how good they are in the early stage markets. It's all kind of small dollars and not that meaningful You know, I'm on the call right? I'm on the call. I mean you're literally talking to the guys spouting off about hitting home runs SPEAKER_01: Sax what are your thoughts on this like private markets obviously is the op where we operate both David's freeburg and sax And you're seeing great deals I think I mean I've invested in twice as many companies during the pandemic as I did before it in the same six-month period What are you seeing in the private markets? And where you think what is your take on best CC's public markets? I you know, we saw some of the best deals that we've seen during kovat and SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm very bullish about the state of entrepreneurship in the US I mean just the the number of interesting companies doing interesting things and The the infrastructure that makes it so easy for founders to get started and create new companies It's so much easier now to create a to create a company that it was 10 years or 20 years ago and of course, it's easy to point to all the ones that don't work or that don't seem like good ideas, but But there's so many more experiments that are happening. And I think that's gonna I'm you know I'm very bullish about that part of the the American economy SPEAKER_01: And freeburg, what are your thoughts on private markets? And obviously you're building private companies You have unlimited capital to build them. I take it given your track record. I SPEAKER_02: Spend most of my time accepting rejections from my very close investor friends in my various projects So I wouldn't say that that ever becomes true. I'll tell you the truth still selling every day dialing for dollars, but No, there are certainly more investors more capital more risk-taking More kind of valuation extending then I think as it was the case pre kovat. I think Chamat's point is right though there is so much more liquidity available through access to retail and international market participants In a public setting than there is in a private setting and it is because of this liquidity premium and the easy access to putting capital in It's just extraordinary how much as I've watched close friends and companies and companies. I've invested in I'm sure you guys have done the same transition from private to public The valuation jump is extraordinary like on a metric spaces, right? So whatever the metric might be you get public there is this flurry of market participation as a result. It drives up There's a multiple and I thought your piece per sorry SPEAKER_03: Can I just say something that's such a such an important smart thing that Friedberg said so Jason for example, like all of us We're all still in the private markets and I'm not trying to take away from the private markets But what David said is so important if you used to look at a SAS deal You'd price that SAS deal 10 times ARR, right? Then there's a little bit of inflation, you know, the rates go up The prices that people pay go up now all of a sudden we're paying 12 times 15 times now It's 20 times if you're growing a hundred percent rate of a year. So what's happened? the market has become more efficient and the excess return is getting eaten up and So you're like, okay. Well, that's still really good and you wait four or five six years and you think you're gonna get paid The crazy thing is like once that company transitions to the public markets I mean all of a sudden if you actually turn the investor base over and you actually create a float so that Public market guys can buy it they'll pay 30 times. That's right 35 times 40 times. So there's a massive multiple expansion So companies should be going public Sooner if you think about this like if I'm trying to raise money for one of my companies SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna call on my 10 20 30 friends that I know that are investors in private markets and say hey guys Do you want to look at this company and maybe I'll get two or three interested parties and maybe we'll kind of agree on? What a fair valuation would be if I could take that same company and instantly make it available to a million Investors and all I need to do by the way is raise ten million dollars All I need is some small number of them to write a couple hundred dollar check and I'm able to fill that round out The valuation as a result of the liquidity available in that market is so much higher because they're everyone's gonna there's gonna be much more participation and bidding and so, you know what, I think Chamath has tapped into with the SPAC vehicle and What Robin Hood is realizing and and and I don't think that we all talk about this enough but there's this massive massive massive market of international investors of Small of international retail investors who are now rushing into US equities freeburg SPEAKER_01: Didn't we see that in the ICO craze as well where you you I think if we took anything from the ICO craze it was Appetite for risk and the dot-com boom before that and I think we have to give best DC a lot of credit here for leading The SPAC movement. I mean, what's your take on everybody copying you down the SPAC path chum up at this point? I had desktop metal as an early angel investment that just backed I've been I like I call it the play. Thank you. Yeah, and then they told me that thank you for the markup And I've been hearing like I'm get if I'm getting inbound as an angel investor from I literally got a cold email from some high Profile people they're like, hey, can you do you have anything for us to SPAC? I mean, this is like the third or fourth time people are coming down to my dipshit level of angel investing saying can you introduce Us to the calm guys. Can you choose them to Robin it? I'm like, I think you can go direct to them. But What is your take on how many SPACs have been created since you like literally single-handedly restarted the SPAC movement? I think there's you don't think you've ever gone on record about this SPEAKER_03: I'm really proud of what we did when we created this thing two years ago I said I want to basically create a new way of doing IPOs. I called it IPO 2.0 I reserved IPO a through Z on the NYSE. I I hope To fulfill that and I think I will But taking a step back for a second in the year 2000 there were 8,000 public companies in America on the American stock exchanges and in the year 2020 there are 4,000 So we've shrunk in half the number of public companies while at the same time we've you know, 10x the amount of the amount of capital and the number of people so We don't have a large enough surface area in the public markets That's why companies are better off going public because they're going to have a much more Receptive audience of people that are dying to own growth of any kind. What's the earliest and the median that people should go public? SPEAKER_01: Well, so here's the thing. So like if you're like one of 30 companies in a venture portfolio that's growing at 50 plus percent SPEAKER_03: You're one of 30 But when you go public you're one of one, you know when you're growing 50 60 percent You you become very unique all of a sudden. You're a sort of a 1% kind of a company You're an outlier and so you get treated, you know, incredibly well, so that's the backdrop I think a company should be going public around year five year six What revenue footprint about 50 million, you know at 50 million and what they're doubling SPEAKER_03: I think that they should be going up and you know, it allows them to build capital slowly It allows them to basically contain control. It minimizes dilution I think it's a really powerful model and then on the number of SPACs what I would say is I think it's really good that The market is getting diversified I think what's gonna happen is like the the thing with SPACs is it's gonna be no different than in some ways The banks that preceded us which is that there's going to be a distribution You can go to Goldman Sachs and that'll mean some one thing You can go to Merrill Lynch or B of A or UBS or Jeffries. It'll mean other things you can go to Allen & Company It'll mean yet another different set of things and I'm sure there's gonna be a you know an organization that Is all about cost that some is gonna be all about relationships Um, so I just think that's gonna be the distribution my personal perspective It's probably us and maybe one or two other people who really dominate the space and I'll tell you the only reason why I say that I Think it's going to be really important when these people try to get these SPACs done What they're gonna realize is it's really hard and it's hard for a couple reasons Number one is you have to marry Operational insight and public market sophistication and The founder will get really smart about being able to figure out whether this person is just a financial arbitrager Or if the person has enough operational experience to deeply understand the business why you have to translate it to the public markets well, that's one huge thing that I think that people will Will start to will start to hone in on Anyways, there's a bunch of other things but Are you now competing with? SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure, I'm cool with that, you know, I invest well before that so I'd be I'd be happy for you probably have a bigger portfolio SPEAKER_02: 50 million dollars. Yeah, it is. It's great for for me and Jason and I you know SPEAKER_00: I I think she mopped deserves a ton of credit on the sole SPAC thing It is I don't know if all the listeners are aware of this but the SPAC things become a huge wave There's a ton of people creating them Kevin Hart says a new one Reid Hoffman has a new one there, you know the East Coast hedge fund guys Pincus and and then the East Coast hedge funds like Bill Ackman, whatever they're all creating them So traumatic has really started a wave here and I think the appeal of a SPAC to a founder I'll put in a plug of why I think it's a good idea for a founder to consider This is because you essentially what founders are used to is doing, you know private rounds, right? You agree on a on an amount raised and evaluation and it's a percent dilution and you're done. That's it And that it's simple right and and when you IPO and need to raise money It's not like that You have to then work with an investment bank They'll put together a book you do like a road show you do this whole dog-and-pony thing You don't know how much money you're gonna get at the end of that process or what the valuations gonna be and then on top Of that we know statistically bill Gurley published all the stats. The investment banks are gonna rip you off So, you know so that what a SPAC does is it prices like a late-stage private round you just agree With a SPAC motor on evaluation and an amount raised and then on top of it you get kind of a direct listing along with it now all of a sudden you start trading as a public company and so a SPAC is like a combination direct listing plus private round and I think that's gonna be appealing to a lot of founders as They start to discover this more and more sacks in a way you're saying it's gonna feel more like doing a series D SPEAKER_01: Then it does a road show and you know I think that comfort level for somebody like Robin Hood or calm or data stacks or thumbtack or any of these companies that you every company your portfolio This is I think this is gonna be the new thing for in early-stage investors is we're not gonna count unicorns anymore We're gonna count SPACs. We're gonna count public listings, right? and and I think that the other thing that I'll say to founders is SPEAKER_03: One is I think you need to you need to think about do these people have the combination of operational and financial acumen in the public markets and investing experience in the public markets and the Operational credibility to describe the business and I think you can trade off one for the other if one is so deep Meaning if Warren Buffett was doing his back you'd say well he has no operational experience But he's so credible in the public markets then, you know, that's all that matters But you need to be super super deep in one or have a really brilliant and thoughtful level of credibility in the public's Meaning an early-stage investor who isn't married to somebody who can basically say I know how hedge funds work I've made them money and I'm gonna make them more money and mutual funds etc is troublesome The second thing is for founders. You have to really make sure you understand what is in it for the person that's doing this back I mean in every deal I write a minimum of a hundred million dollars personally and That's a lot and so I skin in the game I feel very much at risk And so I take a lot of time to make sure these things go well And then the third is that for the SPAC person what I'll tell them is they are gonna find that there's a bunch of landmines And I'm not gonna you know say it up front because I think it'll be fun for them to find out themselves along the way But these things are hard the first one took me two and a half years They're hard. They're hard. They're hard. Hey, let's swing to the election now and SPEAKER_01: Talk a little bit about the flip-flopping We're all doing because we've gone from Trump's a lock to Trump's not a lock, you know And we've had many different theories, but here we are Are we 60 days out now? How many days of the election is it exactly 60 and then the first debate is September 29th Yeah, yeah, so we're at the 55 56 days more than taping of this and the first debate I think is September 30th so we're but three weeks away from Joe Biden and Trump going at it What's everybody's handicapping now the mark the market seemed to be saying even money or a slight edge to Joe Biden? What are our thoughts I SPEAKER_01: I think that I SPEAKER_03: Think Biden's looked the crispest he's looked Okay, so is that actually encouraging or not encouraging? SPEAKER_01: I think it really is because I think he's a really good. Like I said, he doesn't have to SPEAKER_03: Be better than Donald Trump. He just has to not be Donald Trump for a lot of people And so, you know, he becomes a very good do-no-harm alternative Because you know to support Donald Trump you have to have a view to support Joe Biden. You can have no view And I think that that in general that's a bit that's a demand maximizing thing to do So I think he's relatively well positioned. It's the crispest I've ever seen him on television There's less stuttering. There's less not stuttering but like less like mental gas, you know the What do you think of the VP choice Kamala? I think safe. SPEAKER_01: So I agree with Tramath that that was kind of the the take or theory on Biden SPEAKER_00: Like a month or two ago is that he could just run as a protest vote against Trump And and and that's why the basement strategy appeared to make sense is that he would say nothing do nothing go nowhere And just and just try to run as a protest vote against Trump and I think that was working A couple of months ago when you know a COVID seemed a lot worse be the economy seemed a lot worse We're now down to about 8% unemployment. We were at 13 or 14 percent and See, you know Trump had seemed to kind of mishandle the the reaction to to Floyd He seemed to be inciting it but now we have this this issue of the the looting and violence and predominantly Democrat run cities and I think you know Trump has sort of found his sales pitch now in opposing the basically the the radical left and these these mobs and protests that seem to be you know causing tremendous unrest and Looting and violence in our cities and I think it's I think it's a in combination with the improving conditions the economy and COVID I think it's a winning pitch for him unless Biden finds a more compelling way of responding which he has not to date I think you know somebody like Bill Clinton would know exactly how to respond. I think he would you know in the Well, I think you know, he would pull a sister soldier to use a term from the the you know political dictionary where you know Maybe he would take this crazy new book in defense of looting and figure out you know and give a speech denouncing that I mean he would find somebody to his left who represents You know a fringe of the the left that he presumably doesn't support and find a way to distance himself or denounce them like Antifa like, you know the the anyone, you know SPEAKER_00: Any of the left-wing in Portland looting in Portland? I think there's a lot of target Nobody wants to see nobody wants to support that and so Biden comes out and says hey We don't support that and it gives him that law and order vote SPEAKER_01: But yeah, he hasn't done he hasn't really done that. I mean, so two of my favorite political pundits right now are Andrew Sullivan and Matt, uh, Taibbi who are you know, very SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're strong supporters of Biden. They're very anti-Trump But they think he's failing on sort of this these issues because he's not he's not figuring out the right way To uh to denounce what's happening I think a lot of this has to do with when kids go back to school and they're not going to school I think a lot of this has to do with when kids go back to school and the death rate SPEAKER_01: uh of covid and as I was Tweeting and I got no I got a lot of people angry at me Um about tweeting this but I said I think this is a setup for Trump to go into the first debate With you know, well under you know, six seven hundred deaths a day And then the next debate in October with you know Call it three or four hundred deaths a day and basically declare that he did solve covid Uh, because we've been trending down for five weeks now and he started wearing a mask Five six weeks ago seven weeks ago. July 11th was the first day he wore a mask a cynic would say he almost timed Mask wearing which is obviously what we talked about in the first episode or two of all in podcast Was our discussion about why is wearing a mask so difficult for him and it seems like he slow played it He you know, he said he's he slow played He hit his set on the turn and here he is like he wore the mask on july 11th He wore it four months late But guess what as chamath was saying everybody wears a mask and every and and these things go down in italy We're going to come into the first debate. What if it's 400 deaths a day and then the second debate it's 200 That's a day and then our kids are back in school in october Which seems to be the case, right? All the schools are saying, you know be ready for october to open And what if he actually does have a vaccine that has somewhat of credibility or any of these high-speed testing machines come on I mean this could be a setup of all setups for him to just You know drop the microphone. Hey, look the economy is at an all-time high and covid debts are an all-time low SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, yeah, I think democratic cities are on fire that to me seems like the the trajectory I mean We spent a long time on this pod talking about what a disaster San francisco and california are those are one-party states and cities And I think you know, we're not just electing a person as president. We're also electing a party and a movement and a governing philosophy And however much uh trump is You know disliked by a lot of people. I think a lot of people are looking at you know SPEAKER_00: I I think they they may like joe biden personally and and think that he personally is safe But they don't like the movement and the party and the governing philosophy that is now associated with biden So if you had to put your entire net worth on it SPEAKER_01: chamath biden or trump Uh, biden, I think SPEAKER_03: I think biden's gonna sack's entire net worth SPEAKER_00: I I I would uh, I predict trump At this moment you predict but you but you wouldn't put your entire net worth on if you had to I could see your hesitation SPEAKER_01: You want trump trump to win? Oh sure, but you would you wouldn't put you wouldn't put your entire net worth on him But yeah, of course not SPEAKER_01: You would put it on this is this is about a 55 SPEAKER_00: Sort of thing SPEAKER_01: So biden has a 55 chance of winning So even though you're voting for trump you are not going you would not put your fortune on Biden you you asked me who I predict right now. I'm predicting trump. You'll remember on the last pot SPEAKER_00: I predicted biden so it moves depending on what I see. Yeah Yeah, and I'm gonna go with by the way SPEAKER_01: Jason, I think I think a better way to get a better answer is not to force somebody to put their entire net worth on SPEAKER_03: The line is just okay. Who do you think is gonna win? Who do you think's gonna win sex? SPEAKER_01: How many times I have to answer this question you think trump's gonna win you actually yes. Yes, I do actually SPEAKER_01: Really? SPEAKER_00: That's fascinating, huh? And it's still there. Remember it's the first time i've said this SPEAKER_01: I think it's I think it's the same as it was last time for me and has been SPEAKER_02: Most of this process is it's a coin flip and it still is a coin flip And uh, there's a lot of noise between here and 60 days from here. All right Well, then if we if we do think it's a coin flip freeburg what happens if trump is going to win? SPEAKER_01: What happens if trump is elected again? Some people think this is all institutions are broken forever. America's broken forever hyperbolic That's the perception on both sides, right? So the perception and the motivation on both sides is democracy is crumbling SPEAKER_02: And the resultant action is to elect the the person you think will restore democracy The reality is both candidates to some degree might move us a little bit further away from democracy And um some might argue that trump makes us feel a little bit more like an autocratic Dictatorial regime and some might say that biden makes us feel a little bit more like an aoc socialist regime it's not all the way as if we had bernie in the seat, but Um, you know the the reaction, uh, isn't necessarily let's go back to the middle. Let's become a centrist government Let's uh, let's have good political debate and a good by the way the one show i've been watching a lot of lately Just to nostalgia to chamath's tweet earlier today made me feel better about life Is west wing where you know, jed bartlett is the president and he wants a great national debate We all want to have this intellectual exercise of coming to the truth and coming to the best decision for the nation And I don't think anyone feels like that's the case today nor will that be the case tomorrow with either of these guys in the seat And I think the the point then becomes well who's gonna better align with my values and you know It is really a crumbling democracy kind of motivation I would guess if you were to survey people as to how they're making their choice if trump is Elected freeberg. Do you feel it is an acute, you know existential crisis for america as a democracy you personally? SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't think democracies end. Um with a bang. I think they end with a whimper SPEAKER_02: And I think that's been the case historically and you know, no democracy has uh has lasted Our our democracy in the u.s. Has has lasted longer Uh than many um, but democracies Um, but democracies i'll just tell you my point of view on this democracies ultimately enable uh freedom of operation and free markets that um That result in greater progress than any other governing system. The problem with progress is that progress is asymmetric You have some people who progress at a much greater rate than than than most and and it is that delta That motivates the end of that system ultimately um while everyone in the united states or the average and even the bottom quartile of the population in the u.s Is better off than they were 50 years ago in terms of income and health care and shelter and access to food and access to all these things They're the top one percent of the u.s Is further ahead than the median and it is that delta that motivates the end of democracy and it is that is which is then Perceived to be unfair about this governing system and that ultimately results in fascism or socialism And then fascism results socialism ultimately restricts anyone from progression and that's why fascism and socialism ultimately end up in in in some sort of You know democratic outcome and it is a cycle and you know We're kind of in this, you know Awkward phase of trying to figure out what the hell we're going to be next And I don't think that awkward phase um, it's realized in the next presidential term But it is going to be realized in our lifetime. I think that that's a really good point. I completely agree with that SPEAKER_03: Go biden go, but please win SPEAKER_01: Okay wrapping up here, uh media selections of your bestie summer bestie book bestie tv show bestie binge. What do you got? You got a bestie book recommendation sacks. You got a bestie Yeah, my my my recommendation is gonna be a little different. I've been i've been subscribing to a lot of newsletters on sub stack SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I found that to be pretty interesting and like I mentioned two of my favorite writers, especially around Politics and election time andrew solivan and matt tayebi. So Check your overton windows open enough to get to those two who are super polarized and they actually kicked SPEAKER_01: Andrew solivan out of new york magazine for making other writers at new york magazine feel unsafe with his words All all my favorite writers seem to have been cancelled at some previous publication and now they've set themselves up on sub stack. So SPEAKER_00: It is amazing how the overton window has closed Uh bestie seed you have a bestie binge a bestie book or a bestie newsletter or a bestie podcast you want to share with the besties SPEAKER_01: I would give a shout out to a book, uh called americana, which is about uh, it's a history SPEAKER_03: Of american capitalism told in chapters for every call it like, you know, five to seven or ten year decade period It's really interesting for people into business. It's written by a guy named boos swinivasan Okay, bestie freeberg, what do you got best a queen of quinoa SPEAKER_01: I took a week off and hung out at the beach and i've binge watched godfather one two and three as i've done SPEAKER_02: Several times in my past. I also watched uh, one of my favorite top five films of all time. There will be blood by Such a good film that opening scene is just crazy every opening scene It's just such a beautiful film high trade It got me down. Yeah, it got me down this research path on the standard oil company and I ended up First off I ended up reading all mario putzos godfather Which is very graphic and interesting but if you've seen the movie, I don't think you get much more from the book. Um, But then um, I started reading ron chernow's, um biography of uh, oh, yes rockefeller Yeah, and so I don't know if anyone's made it through that 727 page two I got about five minutes left It is detailed it's detailed. So it's not you know, it's it's not probably um, you won't gain as much from it uh as perhaps reading a wikipedia article, but uh The standard oil the the era if you think about what technology is or what we call technology in the us today in our world And and it's mostly software and now increasingly biotech You know there have been different eras of technology And different eras of monopoly, uh, and and just hearing the story of the railroads and standard oil and what took place in this country it's incredible and it's so analogous to what's gone on and and um The outrage and the dissent and the fake news that goes on about these people as they've been successful um, you know, it really is uh history teaches us everything and it's uh, so i'm just you know, Um, I just in the era of standard oil, uh, I'm not sure if you can tell me that but I'm just learning about um, the stories of that time and the people of that time. This is one book that's that's been um, You know an interesting part of the tale besties. I gotta go. I love you guys. Love you, too I'll see you on thursday and fried burgers. I'll see you on thursday. Yes, take it up. Let's go outside SPEAKER_01: SPEAKER_03: I'll just give them all my closing the fish that ate the whale a book about sam zamuri who was the banana king, uh, and SPEAKER_01: Another uh, interesting book about the banana king Who was the banana king, uh and uh another uh interesting book you might like I love capitalism by ken langone who um, you know built SPEAKER_01: He built uh home depot and it's a pretty great story about both stories of capitalism and I think you'll like them freeburg if you like the um Yeah, the books you were talking about. Yeah. All right, everybody. We'll see you next time and don't forget to rate and subscribe and We'll be taping another episode in another five six seven or eight weeks Hopefully earlier than that, uh, take our sacks. Take care freeburg. Take care of chamath and we'll see you all next time on the all-in-puckist